Sils Nietzsche Colloquium: "Politics and Religion"

Those who strive to separate religion and politics are increasingly on the defensive. The idea of the fight against evil, for example, which is supposed to be anchored in the right-wing faith, is no longer only found in political Islam, but increasingly also in liberal democracies, whether among esoteric conspiracy theorists or fundamentalists of all kinds. The findings include the return of debates about political theology that were long thought to be dead, as well as the horror images of a coming apocalypse in the form of climate, AI, war or pandemic. Against this backdrop, we would like to reread Nietzsche's Antichrist, his most radical examination of religion and its politics. The philologist from Basel had already declared that religions do not die: "they merely transfigure themselves". In Antichrist, this insight culminates in a sigh of relief: "Two millennia almost and not a single new god!" The Christian God, that "hybrid decay structure of zero, concept and contradiction", becomes an exemplary instrument of a seizure of power through fake news. From the good news, Paul fabricates an anti-gospel that falsifies the "Redeemer" "for the purposes of propaganda", "tyrannizes the masses" and "forms armies". This rhetoric of the revaluation of all values, taken to extremes in the Antichrist, is challenging. Careful reading should help us to better understand the difficult relationship between religion and politics, also with regard to the current situation.

The colloquium is open to the public and is aimed not only at specialists, but also at an interested audience in general.

The events - lectures, discussions, reading groups - can be attended individually.

The detailed program will be published in April 2026; reservations are welcome.


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.